


California Dreamin'

by LT_Aldo_Raine



Series: A Year in the Life [4]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Boys In Love, Canon Era, Feelings, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23939383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LT_Aldo_Raine/pseuds/LT_Aldo_Raine
Summary: It wasn’t always easy, their life, though it might have appeared sort of picturesque in the way that life in California could sometimes seem.OR: Don and Buck are brought together by the war, and though it threatens to tear them apart, in the end, they manage to come back to one another and build a life together in California.
Relationships: Buck Compton/Donald Malarkey
Series: A Year in the Life [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618882
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	California Dreamin'

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThrillingDetectiveTales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/gifts).



> In classic fashion, I'm chasing the deadline on this one... Oops! 
> 
> Also, did y'all know that delivery food service took off in America in LA in the 1950s? Well, now you do.

There came a low, muffled whine from the other side of the closed bedroom door.

Buck rolled his head against the feather pillow, his fingers flexing against the smooth, freckled planes of his lover’s lower back, to nuzzle against the soft cluster of ginger hair at the nape of a neck more familiar to him than his own. “Your dog is bellyaching.”

There came only an unintelligible mumble in response, one that garnered a quiet chuckle from the tall blonde. Buck ghosted his fingers across his companion’s spine, then dipped his hand below the bedsheet to pinch Don’s ass. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“S’your dog, too.”

Don twisted, pulling himself closer to Buck, though he already lay sprawled across the blonde’s thick chest. The redhead turned so that he faced his lover, and their noses brushed. “It’s your turn to let her back in.”

“No,” corrected Buck in a gentle, teasing voice. “I let her back in this morning.”

The only inconvenience of having a dog, the pair had discovered several years ago when they first adopted Greta, or Gigi as Buck called her (so named after the film starlet Greta Garbo, whom Buck had met once when he was eight-years-old and worked as an extra in Garbo’s film _A Man’s Man_ ), was the repeated ritual of banishing said dog from the bedroom whenever they had sex, only to then be forced to retreat from the warmth of the bed and one another’s embrace in a post-coital haze to allow the dog _back_ into the bedroom when it was all said and done—least she whimper and paw at the door until she drove both of them insane.

Another pathetic yowl sounded from the hallway where Gigi lay in distress against the bedroom door.

Buck sighed. “How am I supposed to get up to let her in if you’re—” The blonde gave Don’s shoulder a playful shake. “—lounging on me like we’re poolside at the Ritz and I’m patio furniture?”

The redhead made a great show of sliding two inches to his right. “There ya go,” he muttered into the taller man’s shoulder, his breath hot and moist against Buck’s skin. The blonde snorted, but there was no fighting the adoring grin that lifted his lips. “Gee, thanks, Don. You’re a real pal.”

Dropping a kiss to the redhead’s temple, his lips just grazing the tip of Don’s ear, Buck artfully dislodged himself from between his lover and the bed to pad over to the bedroom door and greet the lonely pup. “Alright, sweet girl, come on in.” He dipped to pet the border collie’s head, scratching between her ears for a second, before he straightened to watch the dog scoot around his feet and launch herself at the bed. Immediately, Gigi curled up to Don—she might have been _their_ dog, but it was a poorly kept secret that the collie loved Don best—, nestling down into the warm pocket of blankets where Buck had languished pleasantly only seconds before.

“And, of course, she steals my spot. Traitor. See if I let you in next time…”

In light of his threat, Gigi wagged her tail and wiggled closer to Don.

* * *

Lynn Davis “Buck” Compton was a man whose inner thoughts were not easily known. A natural charmer since childhood, Buck concealed his motivations, his dreams, his fears, his cares, his follies, his secrets, his doubts behind a carefully constructed mask of boisterous confidence. He would bat his too long, near feminine eyelashes, his baby blue eyes sparkling alight with merry and conspiratorial mischief that made any and all on the receiving end of such a beguiling gaze feel like a god. He would smile playfully, revealing perfect and boyish dimples, which were often accompanied by practiced but no less warm laughter, the wrinkles of age not yet touching the corners of his eyes. He was tall enough and well-muscled from both a childhood and a collegiate career that revolved around sport. His body knew intimately the test of endurance and stamina, that pain of broken bone and strain. Moreover, Buck knew his body. He moved surely and gracefully in a way that mesmerized others, for it was not often that one so sturdy floated about with the languid ease of a dancer.

And though they watched him and learned him and knew his manner of speaking and could tell his form moving silently in the dark of night by the sound of his footfalls and the shapes of his shadows, so few among the men of Easy Company realized that the man who slept beside them in foxholes and lost his smokes to them in a card games (regardless of the wrath of Dick Winters) was _not_ the man who was truly Buck Compton. The figure without and the person within were not one in the same.

Don Malarkey was one such man who recognized and understood the division.

He was also quite the opposite.

Donald George Malarkey was born into this world with his every emotion written clear upon his face. Like most children, he cried when he was hungry or sleepy, he smiled when he was gleeful, he stared with wide open eyes and mouth when he was enchanted. But unlike most youths who eventually learned to tuck their feelings away behind the various disguises that society provides—polite laughter and smiles, double-edged words, meticulously schooled expressions—, Don never had much patience for such tricks. When he was tickled, he giggled endlessly. When he was angry, his face molted with rage, and he doled out bitter words and fists of fire alike. When he was unhappy, he bore each and every one of his woes in the frown lines and furrowed brows of his face, and sometimes still in the teardrops that stained his blotchy cheeks. Don was not a man of secrets. There was nothing of himself that he could hide from the world—not that he had ever cared to. He harbored his every thought, his motivations, his dreams, his fears, his cares, his follies, his secrets, his doubts freely and deeply and earnestly for all to see.

Sometimes the men, those who led him or were led by him, wondered if there had ever walked the earth a man who felt or shared emotion more clearly that Don Malarkey. There was a resolute air about him from his unyielding candor to the seemingly eternal depths of his loyalty, right down to the firmness of his steady handshake. Don was a man who knew exactly who and what he was and lived his emotionally vigorous life without an ounce of shame. “He’s the midwestern Walt Whitman,” Buck had once said, and when Don had replied, seriously, that he had never heard of the poet, Buck could see the truth of it written across his face. There had been something humbling about the exchange, and Buck had replied, genuinely and without the slightest hint of mockery, “That’s alright, Don. I’ll teach you.”

* * *

When Buck arrived home that Tuesday, Gigi greeted him in the foyer of his Los Angeles home with a wagging tail and a welcoming yip, as was the custom. The young lawyer returned the dog’s reception with the appropriate amount of love and attention the loyal pup deserved, kneeling to better allow the collie access to press sloppy licks over his chin. Grinning affectionately, Buck gave Gigi one last pat before he deposited his briefcase and toed off his shoes, traipsing down the hallway to follow the beckoning trail of his lover’s voice. There was a network of file folders and paper reports fanned out on the kitchen table before the redhead, who had the telephone clutched between his ear and shoulder.

Don flashed Buck a smile as his partner came into view, and Buck dropped a kiss onto the crown of Don’s head just as the redhead began murmuring into the phone, “Yeah, hey, listen, Ted, I’ve gotta go. Yeah, yeah, alright. Tomorrow, then.”

“More on the election?” asked Buck, fetching himself a beer from the fridge. He glanced at the table to see if Don already had a drink before he fished another bottle out for his love. The taller man passed a beer to his seated companion and dropped down into a chair of his own at the table. “You’re going to win.”

Don thanked him for the beer, eyeing some report or another skeptically, and half-mumbled, “Maybe.”

“You will.” 

“Mhmm.” A touch distracted, Don rifled through some papers as he twisted the cap off his beer and took a long, slow drink. He fretted over the paperwork for a moment longer, all the while under the weighted stare of the other man, before he finally sighed and pushed the files aside. The shorter man leaned back in his chair and raised his eyes to meet Buck’s. Instantly, Don’s face softened like ice cream in the sun. “Hey there.”

“I missed you today.” The statement was made with an ease that some years ago would have embarrassed Buck, but it was a widely known truth in those days that the blonde was quite devoted to his little redhead.

Warmth spread across Don’s face as he returned the sentiment, brushing his foot against Buck’s leg beneath the table. “I spoke to Marilyn today. She’s thinking about coming down for the weekend.”

“Is she bringing Joe?” Buck grinned, all too pleased with himself, and Don couldn’t help but roll his eyes. Since the marriage of Marilyn Monroe to Joe DiMaggio, it had become one of Buck’s favorite running jokes to refer to Don’s older sister’s husband as Joe, though the lawyer knew good and damn well that the man’s name was Steven.

“No, no Joe this time. Next trip, maybe. You two can play catch in the yard. Gigi will love it.”

Buck glanced at the collie curled into a soft, furry ball at the mouth of the hallway leading from the kitchen to the living room. “She’ll make a great outfielder.”

“Mhmm.” Don hummed his agreement and took a sip of beer. He motioned the back door, which led to a fenced-in yard and a small patio. “Got some steaks on the grill.”

Don was, without a doubt, the better chef between the two—and he grilled a mean steak. A lecherous grin spread across Buck’s face to reveal pearly white, perfectly straight teeth. His baby blues shone playfully as he teased, coyly, “However will I repay you?”

Before the redhead could formulate a response, Buck stood, beer abandoned, and positioned himself behind his paramour’s chair. He dropped his hands onto Don’s shoulders and began to massage the muscle there, digging his thumbs underneath the shoulder blades in deep circles. There came a general murmur of contentment from the man who had gone pliant beneath his hands, and Don’s head lulled back against Buck’s abdomen. The shorter man’s eyes had drifted shut, and gazing down at his lover’s relaxed expression, Buck felt himself swell with the customary feelings of warmth and love and pride, all wrapped up in the wonder that he had ever gotten so lucky and the protective urge to keep Don safe and happy and to make sure that Buck never lost this perfectly imperfect life that they shared.

In a rush of emotion, Buck dipped to press a kiss to Don’s nose. One of his hands smoothed over Don’s shoulder to skim up the side of his neck and capture the redhead’s chin, holding his face tilted toward the heavens so that Buck could continue to drop kisses across the freckled expanse of his lover’s face.

“Love you.”

Don’s face, ever expressive, glowed with the sort of peace that was the sole result of certainty—certainty in the depth of Buck’s love and the steadfast and everlasting nature of their relationship. His eyes remaining shut, his entire being relaxed, Don replied in kind. “Love you, too.”

Buck pulled Don to his feet, and the redhead rose easily enough. He let himself be kissed and coddled and rubbed, let the buttons of his shirt be undone, let his hair be mused—and as he succumbed, ever willing, to Buck’s manipulations, Don struggled to have the space of mind to warn his partner. “The steaks…the steaks are going to burn.”

The blonde grinned against his lover’s neck, teeth nipping a bit at the sensitive flesh, as his hand sunk lower over the shorter man’s stomach, eventually dipping beneath the waistband of Don’s slacks. “So, we’ll order Chinese.”

In the end, the steaks _did_ burn. Sated with sweat-slick skin and the soft warmth of afterglow, neither Don nor Buck really cared, and while the pair waited on their Chinese food delivery to arrive, they laid on the kitchen floor, exchanging slow, sweet kisses.

When the doorbell rang, Gigi barked and bolted to the front of the house, ready to defend her domain. In the kitchen, Don and Buck clambered to their feet a little slower and a little stiffer than they would have liked.

“Fuck,” groaned Don as he stretched his back. He looked at his love with alarm. “I think we’re getting old.”

The blonde grinned. “Speak for yourself, old man.”

“Six months. I’m older by six months.”

“Older, grayer…”

“You said that wasn’t a gray hair!”

“Sometimes, Don, we lie to protect those we love.”

“Oh, fuck off.” The doorbell chimed once again and set off another round of Gigi’s barking. “Get the goddamn door, will ya?”

That evening, they ate Chinese food on the living room floor and listened to a new Glenn Miller record. They drank wine while they dinned, and afterwards, they made love on the carpet, careful of rug burn, until the sun dipped behind the horizon.

* * *

Don’s and Buck’s relationship began the way all of the men’s relationships were established. Once Buck was initiated in England and recognized as part of Easy, he slipped into the mix of young men, enlisted or otherwise, as a mere part of the collective and formed immediate friendships built upon the simple yet foundational truth that these men now belonged to one another. The blonde athlete, driven by his innate sense of competitiveness, found it was easiest to connect with the men of the company through competition. He joined basketball pick-up games among the platoons, played in football tournaments against other companies, and passed countless hours throwing darts and shooting billiards and betting cards. Between his joy for revelry and his natural, charismatic appeal, Buck found himself well-liked among the majority of the paratroopers, and he returned much of that affection. 

He got along well with the other officers, though it took Nixon a while to warm up to him, and made fast friends with the many of the guys, among the likes of which were George Luz and Bill Guarnere and Joe Toye. However, Buck was drawn in by the magnetism of a certain mortar squad, in particular—some kid from upstate New York called Skip (who wasn’t technically part of the squad, but whose steps fell in with the others so regularly that he was frequently regarded as one of the techs), a Midwesterner named Penkala, and, of course, that matter-of-fact redhead Malarkey. They were alright guys, truly. Each of them was funny enough individually, but they were lethally amusing when combined, as they often were, and the blonde got along with the trio exceptionally well. 

Buck did not realize, however, that he had been particularly charmed by Don Malarkey and that his apparent interest in the redhead extended beyond the jovial bonds of friendship he shared with the other men of his company. He didn’t realize, that is, until the technician approached him one night in Aldbourne after their return from that first jump into France and pointedly declared, “You have to stop.”

A chuckle rumbled past Buck’s lips of its own accord. “Stop what, exactly?” he asked for clarity, and already, the corners of his eyes were crinkling with mirth. He was excited to play whatever game Don had envisioned. “And here I thought I supposed to be the one giving orders…”

Don frowned. The move was a simple one, just the barest turn down of his mouth, a slight pout extended from his button lip. But the gesture, coupled with the overall gloomy quality of his expression, one tinged with a shade of embarrassment, was characteristically revealing of the redhead. “You have to stop looking me. Stop with the glances and the smiles. Stop all of it.”

“I’m sorry?”

With a sigh, Don glanced up at Buck beneath long, pretty eyelashes and spoke like a parent explaining a difficult concept to a notably slow child. “I know you don’t mean to, but you look at me sometimes, and it’s not okay. Not the way you look. And you do it out in the open a lot, ya know? Anybody could see.”

Buck knew instinctively rather than felt his face slip behind a mask of cool, collected ease. “I’m sorry, Don, but I just don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The redhead’s gaze focused steadily on the taller man’s face, scrutinizing, and when he found whatever it was he searched for, Don’s lips fell into a firm line and he nodded swiftly before he stepped back. “Okay. We’ll talk again later.”

All in all, the blonde officer found the brief but intense exchange confusing, if somewhat off-putting. Truthfully, he had no idea what the hell Don was talking about. So, as was his manner, Buck didn’t give it a second thought, aside from a mild, lingering sense of humor. Only, later that evening when he was alone with one hand wrapped around his dick, the other clutching a photograph of his wife, dragging out a markedly extended and torturous orgasm, Buck closed his eyes, mouth parted in a silent plea, and was promptly assaulted with images of ginger hair and a freckled nose, rather than soft brunette curls and a distinctly feminine set of full, pink lips.

He came forcefully, eyes clenched, back arched, with Don’s name on his lips and Don’s face on his mind.

“Holy fuck.”

Buck struggled to believe that it was real, his little infatuation with the redheaded technician, and so he chose to ignore it, burying it down and hiding it behind his perfected image of a happy husband. The façade appeared to work well on the men—except Don, naturally. Don saw the purposeful allure that composed Buck’s smiles, and when Buck spoke, his words dripping from his lips like melted butter, Don thought that the blonde man always recited his words like lines from a well-rehearsed stage play.

“It isn’t working,” the redhead told the platoon leader, and before Buck could offer a well-poised reply, Don cut his head swiftly, “Don’t. Just don’t, alright? This…” He gestured the taller man’s physique. “If this all people can see in you, then they aren’t really looking.”

Back then, Buck wasn’t quite man enough to admit that his heart skipped a beat a little, the organ fluttering at the redhead’s words, which had been stated so purely, so assuredly that Buck knew Don meant them with his every fiber. Buck wished, suddenly, desperately, that he had that kind of faith in something, anything. So, he decided to take his cue from the other man. “What would you suggest I do, then?”

Don considered their situation for a moment. Then, he nodded to himself, having come to some internal understanding, and said with a casual but straight-forward tone, “No use in fighting it, I suppose. And seeing as how we’re most likely going to die, anyway.”

And so, Don kissed him.

Buck _loved_ it.

* * *

It wasn’t always easy, their life, though it might have appeared sort of picturesque in the way that life in California could sometimes appear.

The sun shone often and brilliantly, and the pair enjoyed many a weekend frolicking in the waves and sunbathing on the sand or losing themselves on long drives through wine country and overnight vineyard visits. And sure, they had a nice place and a good dog, and they were both successful in their work—Buck was loved by all in the DA’s office, and it was rumored that he was already on track to becoming the ADA; Don was the youngest head of sales for the California Motor Company and had recently been elected to the LA County’s City Selection Committee. As they approached middle age, they both had their health, having regained most of the weight they lost during the war and retaining much of the muscle sculpted during bootcamp, and they both still proudly sported full heads of hair.

But there was much about their life that was not so rosy.

There were questions from curious coworkers and nosy neighbors, questions about two young, eligible war heroes and a noticeable absence of female companions, questions to be artfully dodged by Buck and to simply be left unanswered by Don. There was the distinct lack of communication from anyone in Don’s family, save his sister Marilyn. There was the polite but stiff way Robey and Ethel Compton regarded _Buck’s friend Don._ There was the way that Don’s fingers twitched to hold Buck’s when they strolled on the sidewalk. There was the way that Buck had to bite his lip to keep himself from kissing Don on a night out.

Worse still, there were the night terrors that plagued them both, sending them bolting upright in bed during all hours of the night, sweaty and gasping for air. There were the phantom pains of their wartime injuries, which were always worse during the winter months as Buck’s feet felt splintered with trench foot and Don’s body perpetually shivered from the cold of Bastogne. There were the daydreams, which were more like nightmares, that carried them miles and years away from their newer and lovelier lives to transport them back to the worst horrors of the war.

Worst of all, there were the gaping holes in their life left by friends who never made it home, none the least of which were Skip Much and Alex Penkala.

Sometimes, a phone call with Bill Guarnere or a letter from Major Winters helped. Sometimes, it made it worse.

Thing that made it bearable was their steadfast companionship.

On those days when Buck’s gaze turned glassy and distant, Don was there to massage his shoulders or coax him into bed where the redhead would stroke up and down Buck’s arms and rub the taller man’s back until he returned to the present. Likewise, on those mornings when Don awoke to thoughts of his dead Easy Co. brothers and the remorse was such that he couldn’t even make it out of bed, Buck was there with a cup of coffee and an endless string of soothing words and featherlight kisses to calm and console the shorter man until Don’s tears dried.

It wasn’t always easy, their life, though it was easily, perfectly _theirs._

* * *

Bastogne happened. Muck and Penk were gone, along with so, so many others, and with every day that passed in that frozen hell, Don felt Buck gradually slipping away piece by piece, like sands through an hourglass. When Buck was moved off the line because of his trench foot, Don visited him at the aid station as often as possible. The redhead spent hours at his paramour’s side giving him updates from the front, reciting anecdotes about this dumb thing that Heffron had done or that funny thing that Luz had said, and reading letters from friends and family back home, though Don noted that there was an acute absence of mail from Buck’s wife who had not written since that fatal Dear John letter.

Don was more than content to hold vigil at Buck’s side. The blonde’s unflappable façade had finally collapsed, and while there was gossip among some of the men that Buck suffered from shellshock, Don knew the truth: Buck had simply had enough pretending. He was not perfect, and war was the exact opposite of perfection. Thus, it was no surprise to Don that his lover’s carefully constructed personification of male virtue and accomplishment would come tumbling down beneath unrelenting mortar and artillery fire. 

Then, one day, Buck told him to stop reading, and Don felt his heart seize.

“I need you to know—” Buck’s back was to him. Don let his eyes trail over broad shoulders and soft, blonde hair. Though the technician wished that he could look his lover in the eyes, he was equally grateful that Buck could not see him squirm. “—that I love you.”

The officer’s frame remained frozen where he lay on the aid station cot, so Don was oblivious to the fact that Buck wanted to scream—because, of course, he knew that Don loved him. It was written there on Don’s face, day after day, in the stubble on the redhead’s chin and the curve of his eyebrow and the dip of his hipbone and the stance of his feet, written there as it had been since the first time Buck had bent Don over and fucked him hard but slow in that barn in Holland before Buck had been injured. Don’s love, ardent and undeniable, had been on display for the world for months, and Buck still had no idea what to do with it, even in the wake of his pending divorce.

Time passed—a moment or a month, a second or a century—before Don realized Buck wasn’t going to say it back.

There was little time for Don to fret over Buck’s silence. The Airborne pushed through the Ardennes, Easy captured Foy, and though the company’s wretched time in the Bois Jacques appeared to have come to an end, the war continued.

Easy Company moved on, but Buck didn’t.

Later, much later—after Hagenau and Kaufering, after the German surrender, after Don’s transfer—, the redhead found himself in the City of Lights. Buck was there, too. But in Paris, Buck avoided him, and when they both returned to the company for Easy’s annual baseball game on VJ Day, the blonde greeted Don like nothing more than a former acquaintance. It stung more than the redhead cared to dwell upon, though, as always, his feelings on having been apparently discarded by his former lover were plain enough to see.

Then, eventually, everyone who was left went home.

* * *

The spring of 1949 found Don at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Having returned to Oregon and resumed his collegiate studies after the war, Don was finally graduating with his bachelor’s degree in business. His sister was the only family member in attendance, though his mother Helen had sent him a pie with her congratulations.

When Buck found Don after the ceremony, the blonde was surprised to see that Don did not appear shocked at Buck’s sudden appearance; rather, the redhead merely seemed resigned—and a touch angry.

“You never responded to my letters.”

The muscles of his face twitched, intuitively attempting to slide into that comfortable, faux grin of his. But Buck resisted. He knew that Don had had enough of his pretending, and more importantly, that Don deserved sincerity. Instead, Buck held his hands at his sides, palms up, in an uncharacteristic display of vulnerability. “I’m not good at communicating. Especially not…not anything important. But you—you’ve always been able to look at me and to—to see me and understand. So, here I am, hoping that…well, that you’ll take another look.”

An eternity passed in the time Don took to appraise him. Buck discovered that he would have happily waited until the end of all time if he could only make Don understand that he had never meant to hurt him; that since their parting, not a single person had gazed upon Buck and actually known him; and that, by God, of course, Buck loved Don, too.

Eventually, Don settled, and he glanced away, his gaze lost in the mob of graduation caps and robes. “There’s a girl.”

Rejection lashed at him like a whip. “Isn’t there always?” Buck replied with his usual air, the perfect combination of aloofness and charm, his old mask slipping quietly into place even as the blonde’s stomach and chest clenched so painfully that he suspected he would never take another breath.

“Her name’s Irene.”

“Are you going to marry her?”

“No,” Don responded, his tone all business. He fixed Buck with a stare that rooted the blonde in place. “I’m going to move to California with you.”

Relief like the man had never known swept over him in a great, sudden rush. This was better than sex. Better than champagne on VE Day. Better than any worldly pleasures or sensations he had ever experienced. Buck was breathless as he retorted, “Oh, is that so?”

“Mhmm.” Don took a step closer. “I’m sure I can find work in Los Angeles now. That’s where you’re at right? Guarnere wrote that you’re a lawyer now—”

And goddamn it, but Buck was _over the moon_ to learn that Don had kept tabs on him in the four years since they’d left Europe and the Germans behind. 

“—but I don’t want to live in some big, fancy house. We’ll get a modest place, alright? And we’re going to need a dog. A big dog, not one of those little, yuppy ones. A big dog named Frank. Or Scout. And—”

Buck kissed him. It was a quick, almost chaste press of lips, before the blonde pulled away to scan the crowd for any outraged onlookers. When it was clear that he’d gotten away with the impulsive gesture of affection, Buck beamed down at Don, whose eyes were wide with adoration and wonder. “I love you,” declared Buck, earnestly. He repeated his proclamation with fervor until Don clasped one of the taller man’s hands in his own and gave a tender squeeze.

Don’s face was calm but gratified as he replied, in his trademark manner of factuality, “I know.” 


End file.
